Smbd-115 //free\\ ✰ <RELIABLE>

Elara was gone, of course. She’d hitched a ride on the last escape pod—Pod 115—and was already teaching the waking crew how to sing again.

WITH JOY.

She could still follow orders. Take the anchors. Leave the ghosts. smbd-115

She froze. Her suit’s gloves were standard-issue. But Kael—the original engineer—had been her great-grandfather. He’d vanished aboard The Lyre . Family legend said he’d stayed behind to lock the core when everyone else fled a reactor surge. Elara was gone, of course

Elara’s cutter pulsed in her palm. Corporate orders: slice, extract, leave nothing alive. But the data core wasn’t broadcasting to empty space. It was broadcasting to the sleeping pods . Three hundred and forty-seven life signs—faint, cold, but there. The antimatter anchors weren’t the prize. The crew was. She could still follow orders